Crowd Funding Foreign Education: Neither Morally nor Ethically dubious

Preksha Sharma

Of late Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media has seen multiple crowd-funding campaigns for people wanting to pursue their masters . Like everything on social media, this surge in the fundraiser campaigns and the morality of the same has been criticized by a few people. However, these arguments seem to come from a place of privilege and ignorance.

Law schools are expensive. Right from the entrance examinations, the process starts eliminating people who cannot afford it. The fee for entrance exams is extremely high and not everybody can afford to pay the same. Not to mention the fact that the entrance exams in themselves are exclusionary and require excellent knowledge of English to be able to clear them in the first place. The tuition fee for most NLUs and private colleges is quite high and unaffordable for many people.

Additionally, internships are mostly unpaid and many students have to bear the cost of living and traveling at their internships. Despite all these factors, many people get into law schools and they work through it. They find a few courses in Universities abroad that they are interested in studying, and they apply. The applications for foreign universities are expensive, and even applying to a few colleges takes up a significant amount of funds.

Foreign universities often charge exorbitant tuition fees for “international applicants” and based on the location of the university, fees range from 30 Lakh to even 70 Lakh rupees. Most people from middle class households cannot afford to spend this amount of money on a year’s education, let alone people from many different marginalised or underprivileged sections of the society.

India is still a conservative society and fundraisers or asking for charity is always people's last option, and many different people choose to let go of the opportunity instead of attempting to fundraise. It is only when people don't have money in their family (no generational wealth, no savings), and they do not have the collateral to get a loan do they resort to crowdsourcing.

The argument that people can and should work jobs and save up for their foreign education is misplaced. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to save up such a sum of money and fund one’s education when it is practically impossible for someone who isn't from a family with savings to "save up" the entire cost for their education, by doing a job while living in metro cities.

Income from part time jobs abroad is only so much and can contribute towards living costs, but wouldn’t be helpful for the exorbitant amount of tuition fee. Not to mention that the offers people receive are conditional offers and they need to show that they have the required tuition fee with them before they leave for the said country.

With regards to Scholarships, all foreign universities only give out very few merit based ‘reputed’ scholarships (for which even the most privileged, who can easily afford the fee, apply as well) and a few part-scholarships. The part scholarships do nothing significant in eliminating the tuition fee costs and the burden is still on the applicant to fund their education.

Also, contrary to what many people argue, getting loans if one’s family doesn't have property or relevant collateral (even if they have strong guarantors) isn't easy.

Furthermore, if people do get the desired loan, it will only ensure that they stay in the well-paying corporate sector and repay the loan for a good portion of their life. This puts them at a financial disadvantage which ensures that they cannot work on the grassroots level because they have a loan to repay.

Fundraising for foreign education isn’t a “new” concept, at least in the legal field. Many people over the years were able to go abroad, study and do remarkable work after coming back, because people from the industry sponsored their education. This has only started becoming more visible to common people because the use of technology and internet has increased manifolds, especially after COVID.

By saying that people who don’t have money for their foreign education should not do crowd funding because it is “ethically” dubious, one is only supporting the idea that only those who have the finances or can get loans should apply.

This argument is incorrect on many levels.

Many foreign Universities have excellent faculty members. They are people whose work students have read and analysed. Studying abroad gives people the opportunity to study from these faculty members first hand.

Multiple crowd funding campaigns is a reflection of the fact that many people who deserve to go abroad for their education are finally getting the opportunity to do just that.

The successful campaigns reflect the power of the community- that if a few people contribute a few hundred rupees, many more marginalised- underprivileged or underrepresented applicants will go to the institutions that have been a dream.

It is also illogical to say that these fundraisers divert the money from more important issues. The legal fraternity itself has way too many people who can and do contribute towards a lot many fundraisers easily. Fundraisers are merely a request to the world at large to show solidarity and give support, howsoever little.

If anything, the increasing number of such funding campaigns is a reflection of two very real facts. First, that education should be free for all and second, that we are far from equality and equal opportunities for everybody.

There is absolutely nothing morally dubious about fundraisers where people clearly share their academic and professional details, their admission information, their monetary requirements and the reason why they chose to start a fundraiser. There is nothing morally dubious with requesting people to contribute any amount of money they can, if they want to do their bit in helping someone achieve their dream.

For the people crowdsourcing, I’m glad that despite hardships and the struggle for money, they did not give up, that they applied and got selected and that they are truly giving it a shot by crowd funding the cost of their education.

This is ground breaking and this change will soon be positively reflected in the sectors these people choose to join after their graduation.

Of course, there are issues with crowd funding, but these issues aren’t the “moral or ethical” issues that many people on social media are pointing out. These issues are about way fundraisers in general work - that people with more contacts or more supporters are able to share their fundraiser in newer, wider circles and many other people cannot.

(The author is fourth-year student at National Law University, Delhi)